I Like My Women Sparkly
by Xenutia
Summary: Harper gets chatted up in a bar, and I'll leave the rest to the title...


i_like_my_women_sparkly

**I Like My Women Sparkly  
****by Xenutia  
**

  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own them, of course. I'm just playing with them a bit. Actually, I just wanted to practice the art of short stories, and this is my excuse.I think Tribune owns Andromeda and all its characters, not little ole me.  
**Rating:** Oh-so-tame. It's a PG, I guess. I'm not very good at US ratings systems, but I think a G is suitable for family, right? But I'd keep it away from any five-year-olds you have lying around. There's a bit of flirtation, but that's all.  
**Summary:** You really need one for something this short? Okay, Harper's in a bar during a refuel stop and he gets chatted up...think about the title and I'm sure it will all be made clear. I can't normally write short stories (I have a little writer's thing called elephantitis) or whimsy (since when is the glass half full?) but I wanted to have a go. Don't flame me too bad! Or do, and I'll make up some startling witty comeback worthy of a standup comedian. You just see if I don't! Enjoy.  
  


*******  


  
It was funny how your wildest dreams never quite turned out how you thought they would.  
  
Harper nursed his drink at the bar, zealously aware of the eyes that appraised, abhorred, or misunderstood him. So many of them, too. There was a time when the feel of so many women's eyes on him would have been an event...something Seamus Zelazny Harper would have boasted to the full in direct competition with Beka for attention. But Beka was not here tonight. She was elsewhere, negotiating her way as politely as her temper allowed through a formal dinner Dylan had instigated. Rev was visiting an old Wayist friend unfortunate enough to live on this raucous fuelling station, and Tyr...well, it was none of his business what Tyr did with his spare time.   
  
Harper sighed, raised his glass to his lips, and took a longer chug than he intended. His stomach flipped in protest to the twenty percent proof lighter fluid they passed off as whiskey in this joint. He replaced the glass in its own damp imprinted ring on the scored and scratched bar top to find a hand rested beside it.  
  
The hand was too small to belong to a man, too adorned with ostentatious rings of emerald and some kind of milk quartz to belong to a man...and as far as Harper could tell, if it was a man, he didn't want to be here. Harper was fairly positive he didn't want to be around any man that painted their nails.  
  
His eyes followed the unavoidable line of a bare-skinned arm, up to a shoulder as devoid of clothes as the limb attached to it. The shoulder ended at the cusp of a heavily jewelled necklace, an expanse of skin stretching between the ornaments and the top of a black leather bustier tied with criss-crossing laces in front.   
  
Harper finally gave thought to looking at her face, and blinked in astonishment against the dim, smoky gloom of the space bar's interior. This chick was hot. Really hot.  
  
You look about ready for a refill,' the woman said. Your glass is half empty.  
  
He shook himself back to reality with a sigh, and called up his most accommodating grin from the vast catalogue of them he had developed for every eventuality. Whatever the situation, he could find a grin or grimace to match it. He glanced down at the glass, a last remnant of clear amber liquid clinging to small fragments of melted ice cubes, and nodded. Actually, my glass is half full, but hey, feel free to pull up an inkblot and we'll try out some more mindless shrinkology.   
  
That's what Trance would say, he thought, cagily. With Trance the glass is always half-full.  
  
She might have passed on the inkblot part, though.  
  
The woman brushed her long, heavy sheet of jet black hair behind her shoulder, making it whisper about her neck as it moved. She was hot, this one. She was hot, and she was talking to him.   
  
Then why, Harper mused, was he feeling oddly compelled to get rid of her?  
  
She tipped the bartender a nod, and Harper's dwindling ice cubes were drowned in fresh whiskey. The woman began to talk, and, disinterested, Harper listened, wondering all the while how he could make her go away.   
  


*******  


  
It felt like hours later when the woman with the black hair and metallic ornaments so dense you'd think she was a magnet brushed her hand across his leg, making Harper spill the last drops of a third whiskey on the unvarnished wood. Something about the way the foul-tasting liquid stained it worried him, but he pushed the concern for his innards away. Tactfully he took hold of the woman's hand, lifted it, and set it on the bar, away from him and his...personal...areas.  
  
It's been great and all, lady, he grinned, keeping it flippant. But to be honest with ya, I don't like my women to rattle.  
  
As the brunette huffed in disgust and walked away in a sweep of cheap, drenching perfume and a click of jewellery, Harper found his eyes drawn once more to the girl at the slot machines, leaping for joy amongst a dense group of spectators as she won yet another game, and the rush of glinting coins gushed from the mouth of the beat-up equipment like a silver and gold waterfall. Her skin caught the light of the bar lamps far more brilliantly than even the vast amounts of currency pouring into her outstretched, open hands...as he watched, mesmerised, she seemed to illuminate everything around her.  
  
I like my women sparkly, he said, to nobody in particular.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
